St. Louis Brass Quintet
Provides Evening of Music and More

Saint Louis Brass Quintet

Dispelling the myth that its kind of music is aimed solely at classical music lovers, the Saint Louis Brass Quintet will present a nicely varied program when it appears at the Mason Hall Performance Center, David Walters Department of Music, on the Jacksonville State University campus, Friday, February 9, at 7:30 p.m. The concert is free and open to the public.

Take two trumpets, one French horn, a trombone, and a tuba—put them in the hands of virtuoso performers, add some lighthearted demonstrations—and you have the Saint Louis Brass Quintet.  The concert starts as any concert might, but as it moves along the music gets lighter and the Quintet presents the humorous demonstrations for which it is famous.

“We have a lot of fun with the audience,” trombonist Melvyn Jernigan told a reporter after a concert last fall.  “It starts out really kind of straight and then gets lighter as we go along,” said Jernigan, a music educator who has performed with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra in addition to his quintet role.

In addition to Melvyn Jernigan, members of the quintet include trumpet soloists Allan Dean and Ray Sasaki, hornist Thomas Bacon, and tubist Daniel Perantoni.  Trumpeter Allan Dean has written many of the arrangements, including some songs and other music of the Renaissance, and tangos by the Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla.

The program will feature American composers of both the jazz and classical genres.  The Quintet has commissioned two jazz-oriented arrangements—the famed “Sweet Georgia Brown” and a medley, “Tribute to Pops”—and will present them at this concert together with a new commission, “Daylight at Midnight”, by Dana Wilson.  A special event for this tour is the new work “Aesop’s Fables”, by Anthony Plog, in which the brass music is used to accompany the clever stories.

Humorous demonstrations offered by the quintet have served to enhance their reputation as an extraordinary musical group.  One such demonstration will focus on the history of brass instruments all the way from the time of King Tut to the present, including the straight trombone and the French horn fashioned from a twelve-foot length of garden hose.

The Brass Quintet has numerous recordings to its credit and has been in existence for more than thirty years, presenting hundreds of concerts across the country and internationally.  The musicians have been funded for touring by the Missouri Arts Council, the Illinois Arts Council, the Mid-America Arts Alliance and the National Endowment for the Arts.

To learn more about the Saint Louis Brass Quintet, see www.hornplanet.com/slbq/.

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